“Will you look at mine and give me your opinion?” asked Lucien.

“So be it,” said d’Arthez.  “I am living in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.  Desplein, one of the most illustrious men of genius in our time, the greatest surgeon that the world has known, once endured the martyrdom of early struggles with the first difficulties of a glorious career in the same house.  I think of that every night, and the thought gives me the stock of courage that I need every morning.  I am living in the very room where, like Rousseau, he had no Theresa.  Come in an hour’s time.  I shall be in.”

The poets grasped each other’s hands with a rush of melancholy and tender feeling inexpressible in words, and went their separate ways; Lucien to fetch his manuscript, Daniel d’Arthez to pawn his watch and buy a couple of faggots.  The weather was cold, and his new-found friend should find a fire in his room.

Lucien was punctual.  He noticed at once that the house was of an even poorer class than the Hotel de Cluny.  A staircase gradually became visible at the further end of a dark passage; he mounted to the fifth floor, and found d’Arthez’s room.

A bookcase of dark-stained wood, with rows of labeled cardboard cases on the shelves, stood between the two crazy windows.  A gaunt, painted wooden bedstead, of the kind seen in school dormitories, a night-table, picked up cheaply somewhere, and a couple of horsehair armchairs, filled the further end of the room.  The wall-paper, a Highland plaid pattern, was glazed over with the grime of years.  Between the window and the grate stood a long table littered with papers, and opposite the fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of drawers.  A second-hand carpet covered the floor—­a necessary luxury, for it saved firing.  A common office armchair, cushioned with leather, crimson once, but now hoary with wear, was drawn up to the table.  Add half-a-dozen rickety chairs, and you have a complete list of the furniture.  Lucien noticed an old-fashioned candle-sconce for a card-table, with an adjustable screen attached, and wondered to see four wax candles in the sockets.  D’Arthez explained that he could not endure the smell of tallow, a little trait denoting great delicacy of sense perception, and the exquisite sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours.  Daniel listened conscientiously, forbearing to interrupt by word or comment—­one of the rarest proofs of good taste in a listener.

“Well?” queried Lucien, laying the manuscript on the chimney-piece.

“You have made a good start on the right way,” d’Arthez answered judicially, “but you must go over your work again.  You must strike out a different style for yourself if you do not mean to ape Sir Walter Scott, for you have taken him for your model.  You begin, for instance, as he begins, with long conversations to introduce your characters, and only when they have said their say does description and action follow.